Every other day people declare that they love amala, and it’s usually a frightening experience for me because as a Yoruba person I’ve had amala all my life and I’ve always hated it.
Whenever my mother made amala, I knew I was going to bed hungry. Why don’t I like amala? Glad you asked;
It’s made from waste
How sweet can something made from the back of yams be? How poverty-stricken are we that we are eating dried remnants?
However, if you want to lose weight, you should eat Amala because it has a lot of fibre.
It’s soup selective
Unlike Eba and pounded yam which goes with virtually every soup, Amala has to be paired with gbegiri and ewedu. If you make the fatal mistake of pairing it with another soup you’re in trouble.
It only tastes good in restaurants
This is what we call the great amala controversy. What does it only taste good if you eat it outside? Is there something in the air?
If food tastes good sometimes and bad at other times then it’s probably not so good. Some people have even said that if the restaurant has AC, it cannot be sweet, it has to be a local restaurant with a mean server with a difficult Yoruba accent.
You only eat amala when going through tough times
For me, it was during law school when I was tired of eating rice, I found the next amala joint to drown my sorrows in, but I haven’t eaten amala since then, life hasn’t stressed me that much.
It has too much PR
Amala is like a mid-artiste with an excellent team of five people who keep saying this is the best swallow in the world, so now everything tries to have a taste and gets swayed by the hype. Meanwhile, the true greats don’t have to make so much noise.